Dahi handi gets Spanish flavour, 9-tier pyramids

For the second year in a row, Jogeshwari’s Jai Jawan Mitra Mandal accomplished its feat of a nine-tier human pyramid at Thane’s Sangharsh dahi handi event, winning a golden handi and Rs 15 lakh as prize money on Monday

For the second year in a row, Jogeshwari’s Jai Jawan Mitra Mandal accomplished its feat of a nine-tier human pyramid at Thane’s Sangharsh dahi handi event, winning a golden handi and Rs 15 lakh as prize money on Monday.

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Sangharsh was among the scores of competitive govinda events organised across Mumbai and Thane to celebrate Lord Krishna’s birth on Janmashtami.

Jai Jawan’s feat was matched by the much-publicised Catalonian castellers, the Spanish equivalents of Indian govindas who put up a stellar performance for the first time on Asian soil on Monday.

Invited by Sangharsh organiser Jitendra Ahwad, the 250 members of Castellers da Vilafranca made two eight-tier pyramids in the morning and, with the help of local govindas, formed a nine-tier one in the evening. In their grand finale, they built an eight-tier tower with four people at each level, which, while being dismantled, left a pillar of six individuals standing atop each other.

“This is just unbelievable. We had never formed these many pyramids on Asian soil,” said Miquel Ferret i Miralles, president of the castellers’ technical team. All the large dahi handi events in the city were about hard competition, big money and glamour. This year, organisers were offering as much as Rs 1 crore for making ten tiers. Most of the govinda teams made seven-tier pyramids with ease, while many more made eight tiers compared to last year.

At Worli’s Sankalp dahi handi event, film actors Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor, and Karishma Kapoor made an appearance; in Thane, Shiv Sena legislator Pratap Sarnaik got actors John Abraham and Neha Dhupia to break the ‘corruption handi’.

On city streets, small-scale dahi handis were seen in every lane. Spectators too roamed around the city in large numbers.